


FABRICATE

by Mikkeneko



Series: Caleb's Copendium of Kisses [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Practical magic - Freeform, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 21:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18948601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: The adventuring lifestyle can be hard on people's bodies and also their possessions. Caduceus can heal bodies, but who will fix the healer's broken treasures?





	FABRICATE

  
It was probably inevitable. Caduceus stares at the fragment of pottery, the curved shard that had broken off from the teapot's spout, which is all that remains now of the tea set he took along from home. A bit of blue flower and green leaf curls around the smooth outer side of the shard, only a fragment left of the original pattern.

If he'd been thinking ahead, he really shouldn't have taken the tea set with him in the first place. It was -- he wouldn't have thought of it as fragile back home, it was sturdy ceramic, but sturdy ceramic didn't stand up to being thrown against a brick wall by an explosion and then dropped down a well. He really shouldn't have taken the tea set with him at all but he wasn't thinking, except that he was leaving home for the first time in his life and he'd been scared, overwhelmed by all the newness and strangeness and needing something familiar to cling to. Not just the pottery itself but the ritual, the familiar motions of brewing and pouring and drinking the tea had helped calm his nerves dozens of nights along the trip.

Now it's gone. His mother's favorite tea set is gone, crushed into fragments and then those fragments scattered out of reach. There'll be no mending this, not with glue or gold or magic. It's gone, and so too is the comfort the familiarity had brought him.

Footsteps sound softly in the hall and come to rest outside his room. A moment later he hears a hesitant rap on the door. "Yes?" he calls out. He's pretty sure the footsteps belong to Caleb -- he's the only one of the Nein who walks with such a shuffling gait -- but they seemed a little heavier than normal so he's not sure. (Anyway it tends to weird the others out when he guesses who people are in the next room -- Nott is convinced that he can see through walls.)

Caleb pokes his head around the doorframe. "Mister Clay? Can I come in?" he asks.

"Oh, hello," Caduceus greets him warmly. He waves towards the rest of his room. "Feel free, sit down, make yourself comfortable."

Caleb pushes open the door and comes in. He's carrying a book under one arm, a usual sight, but he's also holding what looks like a large bucket in his left hand, full of something extremely heavy if the way he carries it is any indication. Caduceus sniffs cautiously: it smells faintly like dirt, a little echoing smell of stone, of water falling on dusty dry earth. It smells like his namesake. Why would Caleb be carrying around a bucket of clay?

Caleb clears his throat, shifting from foot to foot, and Caduceus blinks as he realizes he's wandered off into thought again. He's not being a very good host. "Oh, sorry. Would you like something to eat? I'm afraid I can't offer you tea right now," he apologizes. He gives a little frustrated motion towards the empty table, mute proof of his inadequacy.

"Ja, I know," Caleb says. He sets the bucket down beside the table and sits opposite Caduceus. "I ahh... I saw the contents of your knapsack fall, when Yasha pulled you up over the ledge. This is the only piece that was left?" He gestures at the shard.

Caduceus can't help but sigh: "Yes. It's beyond saving now, I'm afraid."

Caleb nods understanding, then gives a single headshake as though clearing his head. "Maybe," he says, then stops.

There's a pause as Caduceus waits for Caleb to finish his thought, then tries to figure out what Caleb meant by that. Did he mean 'maybe yes' as a way of agreeing, or 'maybe not' as a way of disagreeing? But why would he say that, since it was so obviously lost forever?

After a minute of silence Caleb clears his throat again, then gives a little cough. "Did, ah," he says tentatively. "Did this particular set have a kind of... meaning for you?"

Caduceus nods heavily. "Yes, it was a family heirloom."

"How long was it in your family?" Caleb asks.

Caduceus shrugs. "All my life, plus a while longer. They belonged to my mother," he says. "I remember being much younger and how she would serve breakfast in a set we had of wooden bowls, and drinks out of this set of teacups."

"It must be very painful to have lost them, then," Caleb offers.

Caduceus shrugs again, an uncomfortable hitching of his shoulders that stay bunched up by his ears. He recognizes that Caleb is trying to show sympathy and that's nice of him, but talking about it isn't fun. "It's... it's not great, but... I suppose it's the natural consequence of bringing them along on such a dangerous quest," he sighs. "I knew when I started that I was going to have to make some sacrifices. It's... painful, yes, but I would sacrifice a lot more than some cups if that's what the Wildmother asks of me."

"You know," Caleb says, with an unaccustomed note of energy in his voice. "Sometimes I think perhaps you are too willing to let things be sacrificed, even when they don't need to be. You do not always have to let things be lost. Sometimes it's okay to push back, you know?"

  
"That's..." Caduceus searches for a polite way to answer. "That's not really my way," he settles on.

"No," Caleb agrees. "But it is mine."

Caduceus looks at Caleb searchingly, equal parts wary and curious. Caleb is definitely getting at something, but Caduceus honestly doesn't know what. "What did you have in mind?"

Caleb doesn't answer right away. He gets up and begins searching around the clutter on Caduceus' desk, finally turning up a deep wooden tray. He sets it on the table beside the fragment of pottery and then hauls the bucket he brought in with him up to the level of the table. A cascade of crumbling, greyish-white soil pours out of the bucket into the tray, filling it several inches deep before tapering off. Caduceus sniffs; it's definitely raw clay. But why?

"Last week, when I was recovering from that demon attack, you served me tea out of this set of cups," Caleb says.

It's a bit of a non-sequitor, but Caduceus thinks back and he thinks he remembers the scene. Caleb had been quieter than usual, weakened and sickly from the assault of necrotic damage, and Caduceus had more than anything wanted to pick him up and hold him, kiss him as though that could pass healing beyond normal spells. But he hadn't, because he hadn't been invited, and he didn't think it was what Caleb needed in the moment anyway. So instead he'd made tea, and stayed with Caleb throughout the afternoon until his strength returned.

"Oh, yes," he says when he realizes that Caleb is waiting for a response. "I remember."

Caleb nods shortly. "So do I," he says, voice firm and decisive.

The wizard stands and raises his arms, holding his hands level above the tray of kaolin. He spreads his fingers and twitches as though feeling the heat of a fire. After a moment his fingers still as though he has found some invisible string or setting that he was looking for, and whispered words begin to leave his mouth. Try as he might, even with his excellent hearing Caduceus can't make out the words. They seem to be coming from everywhere and nowhere and travel inwards from the walls, settling in on the surface of the tray and fading, muffled, subsumed into the clay.

The surface of the grey soil begins to vibrate, individual crumbs separating from the surface to tremble and skitter off against the sides. Before Caduceus' eyes the entire mass begins to shift and boil, sinkholes appearing and vanishing as the agitated material churns and folds in on itself. Bulges appear scattered around the tray, four small regular lumps and one huge one that towers over the rest. The level of clay sinks rapidly as the raw material is subsumed into the rapidly forming blisters, sucking up every particle in its formation.

The four lumps of clay spin, shift, change consistency; their surfaces begin to smooth, forming regular curves. Caduceus' eyes were wide through this whole display but he can't help a sharp indrawn breath as the shapes resolve into ones he can recognize: four small teacups and a single stubby teapot, painfully familiar in their outline.

Caleb isn't quite done yet: the greyish color of the clay congeals, fluxes, then separates into patches of pearly white and lines of blue and green. The lines of pigment spin off, curve and lengthen and bloom into vines and leaves and flowers across the curves of the teacups, while the rest of the ceramic surface settles into a pigment-free eggshell white.

The trembling of the tray lessens, then subsides to nothing; Caleb lifts his hands and drops back down onto his chair, breathing hard; and sitting on the tray in front of Caduceus is a perfect replica of his lost tea set. He reaches for a cup then hesitates, hand outstretched, looking at Caleb for permission. The wizard seems winded as though he just ran up a flight of stairs, but he nods and waves Caduceus forward.

He picks up one of the cups carefully and cradles it reverently in his hand. It's warm, a faint tingle of energy just fading, and the weight and smoothness of it is so familiar.

Some of the details aren't quite right. It's _almost_ perfect -- astonishingly close to perfect -- but Caduceus remembers there used to be a nick on the foot of the teapot that perfectly lined up with the angle of one of the flower vines. He'd spent long idle hours as a child staring at that notch, tracing the flow of the flowers as they parted around it. That's missing from the new set and there are a few other lines out of place as well, leaves and petals that hadn't been on the original. But to someone who hadn't spent a hundred years memorizing the exact pattern on this china, it's astoundingly close.

That's okay, though, that it isn't perfect. Things change over time, things grow. The little details don't matter so much as the fact that his mother's tea set is returned to him, thanks to Caleb.

He sets the teacup down on the tray with hands that are trembling just slightly and stands up from his chair. Stooping over Caleb he brings up one hand to brush against the side of his face, tucking away a strand of copper hair that had fallen loose across his cheek during the intensity of his casting. Caleb looks back up at him, leaning slightly into his palm, his expression bright and open and unreserved.

Caduceus says, in a voice that is trembling just as much as his hands, "Mister Caleb, I would very much like to kiss you now."

Caleb smiles. "Mister Clay," he says. "I would like that too."

His heart leaps in his throat and he leans in just a little too quickly, nearly bumping his forehead against Caleb's. The wizard's smile widens as he tilts his head back a little, matching the angle of Caduceus' face, then his eyes flutter closed and his lips part as he drifts forehead.

In his hundred-something years of life Caduceus has kissed before, albeit not all that often. It's never been like this, soft and hot and yielding and yet shot through with sparks. He touches his tongue to Caleb's, traces over the soft inner surface of his lower lip, and he thinks there's a realm to explore here as vast and exciting as the whole of the world outside his graveyard.

He can't do things Caleb's way all the time, he doesn't think. Their outlooks, the way the world has shaped them, are just too different. But every once in a while -- now and then -- Caleb is right. He can keep things, sometimes. He doesn't have to give them up.

He won't let go of this one.

 

* * *

 

 

~end.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Fabricate**  
>  4 transmutation  
> Casting Time: 10 minutes  
> Components: V S  
> Classes: Wizard  
> You convert raw materials into products of the same material. For example, you can fabricate a wooden bridge from a clump of trees, a rope from a patch of hemp, and clothes from flax or wool.  
> Choose raw materials that you can see within range. You can fabricate a Large or smaller object (contained within a 10-foot cube, or eight connected 5-foot cubes), given a sufficient quantity of raw material. If you are working with metal, stone, or another mineral substance, however, the fabricated object can be no larger than Medium (contained within a single 5-foot cube). The quality of objects made by the spell is commensurate with the quality of the raw materials.
> 
> As the cups are actually pretty simple ceramics I decided Caleb didn't need crafting proficiency to recreate them, with his perfect memory of the cups being enough to recreate the pattern.


End file.
